It will be good to sleep in a bed tonight. It’s been good to spend a week away from it. We made Wales in four hours, crossing the border some time around threeish on Monday. The names were all pretty familiar, and after a short stop at Swallow Falls (disappointing from lack of rainfall) we headed west through the Llanberis Pass to the foot of Snowdon. Its head was lost in the clouds.

The site I wanted was full. For tents at least. So we drove on down the road a field behind a pub that had a picture of a shower on the gate and a camper van with the words ‘Kon Tiki’ written on its awning parked nearby.

We pitched at the far end of the otherwise empty field, within view of a wide shallow river and close by the trees to keep out the wind.

It might not have been flash and the showers may have been distinctly poky (and a little brown in the corners) but it had its benefits: it was quiet, it was close to deserted, the only sounds at night beyond the odd distant car were the hooting of owls and the scurrying of small animals. The closest building was a pub.

So, we cooked food on our wobbly gas stove in thin aluminium pots and settled down for the night, the wind gently rippling the canvas of the tent.

Tuesday made up for a week away from the gym. We climbed Snowdon.

We hadn’t intended to. The trains were full, though, and so after reading the signs that it should take three hours on the ‘easiest’ and ‘most popular’ path we set off to see how far we got.

To be honest, I was ready to stop after the first two hills and it was only Paul’s encouragement that kept me going. The view from the top was well worth it, though. I’ve been three quarters of the way up on the train before, but we got stopped by the low clouds, so it was the first time I’d made it all the way. The peak is a platform of granite or slate with steps leading up from each side. A dozen or so climbers, most of whom probably used the train and so whose legs weren’t screaming like ours, were clustered around it, reading the place names being pointed out on a brass plaque on the top.

I sat down on the edge, my feet dangling as I looked out across the miles of view that stretched as far as England in one direction and Ireland in another. The wind whipped around and my breath clouded in the air.

When you’ve sat there for ten minutes and texted everyone in your phonebook (full signal on the mobile, even at 3,500ft) there’s not much to do but use the toilets and buy coffee in the slimy cafe. It’s not a nice place. It plays on the fact that there is nothing else up there and you’ll probably be desperate for something to eat, or at least to drink.

So, as tradition dictates, we drank, and then headed off back down the mountain as the clouds closed in.

It took an hour and three quarters to get back to the bottom. Not bad considering it was a four hour climb. I’m not sure what was more painful, though; pushing up against gravity, or trying to slam on the brakes as it pushed you down.

I really felt it the next day.

We stayed a second night in our field then the next morning, barely able to walk, we packed up the camp and drove north to Llandudno. I’d been there twice before, but only ever out of season, and I think I prefer it that way. There were too many people this time around. The beach was cluttered. The streets were crowded. The pier was swaying, perhaps with the weight of all the people.

We didn’t stay long. We ate, then drove to Caernarvon, by way of Bangor, in honour of the song. Pleasant enough, but nothing going on. So, we moved on to Caernarvon, where the huge, well preserved castle is the place where the monarch crowns the first-born son as Price of Wales. We drank coffee, took pictures and looked at the flashy camping stoves in the out-bounds shop but left them on the shelves. The guy behind the counter admitted that the gas for them was pretty non-standard and pretty hard to find.

I think our two nights in a field had rather spoilt us, though, as we set out south towards Shell Island. In reality this is more of a spit of land than an island, and it was slightly disappointing to find that the causeway wouldn’t even be covered until the end of the week. It was also right beside an RAF air base, so we had the questionable benefit of warplanes buzzing the tops of our tent poles from early in the morning until early in the evening. They would scream off across the sea then slam on the brakes for a sharp turn, a second pass and then a burst of reverse thrust or whatever it is they have as they dropped towards the land for the runway.

Interesting the first few times, but you tire of it.

The whole thing was far too… well, organised, I suppose. There was a shower block for which you had to queue. There was a canteen. There was a pub, which was jam packed the one time we tried to get in. The crowd around the bar was eight or nine deep right the way along. We walked right out again and thought back to our nice big, nice empty inn beside the field of the two nights before.

It was also a bit too family oriented, really. Shell Island is a big place with room for 800 family sized tents and although you aren’t allowed to pitch within 20 metres of the next tent and it was nice to be camped among bracken and sand dunes, the peace and quite of the child-free field was sorely missed.

That said, we slept well, and woke the next morning to grey skies and an empty fuel tank. This need for petrol determined our direction, and so we headed out across the causeway again and north into Harlech to find a garage. We were ripped off, but had no choice - if we didn’t fill there we’d run dry somewhere on a deserted road.

So, as we were going that way anyway we continued in the same direction and ended up at Port Meirion, the Italianate town on the misty Welsh coast in which they filmed The Prisoner back in the 60s. I was surprised you had to pay to get in - I had thought it would just be a regular town, albeit prettier than most, that you could enter and leave at will. Turns out, though, that the whole thing is a big hotel, run by a charity to keep it maintained.

It kept us entertained for the full day, though, in spite of the fact we thought we’d be in there and out again in under two hours, and the fact that neither of us had seen The Prisoner when it was on TV.

And that was our last day. We spent today on the road, alternately driving through rain and brilliant sunshine. Some of the time we sat in traffic jams, which is only to be expected on the Friday before a bank holiday weekend, but by and large all went well.

Arrived home to plaintive miows from Oscar, who arrived earlier and will be staying until Wednesday while Sal’s away in Cornwall. He’s so snuggly friendly he makes coming back from holiday not nearly so hard as it might have been.

There’s a gallery of seven pictures from the week online here.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2003 at 11:45 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.